University of Minnesota on 60 Minutes

[MGGopher]

I am a U of M track and field alum. I think the thing about all of this that gets under my skin is the excess that the football team spends money vs. the non-revenue sports. When I got to the U (Fall 1997), I wasn't showered with gear. All of the non-revenue sports got the same stuff. A pair of yellow cotton shorts, a gray Russell t-shirt, a gray Russell sweatsuit, a pair of socks. For track we got some other specific things like some spandex shorts and pants and some running shoes. All of the clothes had the generic "Minnesota Athletic Department" printed on them, which had a circle in the middle for my number to be written on with a sharpie (229). We got warmups for meets that we had to return at the end of the year. We took busses everywhere in the midwest. We took yellow school busses to the airport when I was fortunate enough to earn a spot to travel to big meets. We stayed in motels. (Jack Brewer came with us to Penn State for our conference indoor meet one year and he complained constantly about how we traveled and where we stayed.) We got per-diem for our Spring break trip, which I bought lunch meat and bread with so I could make it through the entire week. I paid my own way to school for the first 3 years, before earning a partial 10% scholarship for my 4th year and a 15% scholarship for my 5th year when I was one of the team captains. To this day I still am paying off my student loans.

And you will never, EVER hear me complain about one second of it. Those were the greatest years of my life, through highs and lows, meeting people that would shape me for the rest of my life. I find myself so lucky to have gone on those trips, and competed at the highest level of collegiate track and field. I understand that the football team paid for all of it, but cutting those opportunities for so many young men to save a fraction of the deficit is unconscionable. The recruiting budget alone for football could nearly carry men's track and field's entire budget.

I love the U. I've loved the football and basketball programs. But to sacrifice sports and opportunities to try and compete in the bloated arms race of NCAA football isn't worth it in my mind.

Thanks for competing for the M&G and congrats for rising to such high levels in your chosen sport -- it's an impressive feat that few can boast. I disagree with your position on football, but I wanted to say that first.

As for the football budget, I'm sorry, but it's an arms race. If the U of M wants to compete, they MUST keep up. For most of the past 50 years, they intentionally chose at an institutional level not to do so and predictably awful results followed on the field. With the building of TCF Bank Stadium, massive upgrades in facilities, and huge increases in coaching salaries (still near the bottom of the conference, however), they chose a different path the past 10 years and results have improved. Even a top 10 national university in NW has spent hundreds of millions on FB in that timespan -- including a huge practice facility on the banks of Lake Michigan.

If you want the U of M to decrease spending on football, you've got two choices:

1) Accept a losing program
2) Lobby the NCAA to put universal caps on football spending. This would likely be circumvented by large programs via boosters/dirty money like every other NCAA rule, but I'm sure at least some schools would adhere to it.

 

[MplsGopher]

I went to the U with Libby, lived in the same dorm (Middlebrook) freshman year, and even had the same major as her (poli sci). We are still "Facebook friends" to this day. This is a disappointing, but not at all surprising, letter from her. If you had told me that Libby Sharrow wrote a letter to the STrib re: men's football at the U, I could have summarized the key points without having read it. She tries to establish some level of athletic bona fides by mentioning her previous association with the rowing team (which is true), but she cares as much about football as the average poster here cares about the rowing team.

Bolded is not any kind of logically valid argument against why she has standing to express the opinions she did.

Silly post